


The Value Of A Smile

by AntiKryptonite



Series: The Worth Of Childhood [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, child!fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-19
Updated: 2013-06-21
Packaged: 2017-12-15 11:21:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/848960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AntiKryptonite/pseuds/AntiKryptonite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Little Rum is entranced by the new girl on the block and is willing to make any deal to ensure that he continues to receive her smiles, while tiny Belle is worried about finding her lost dog, Gold.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Best Deal

\---

She smiled. All the time. Which was weird. Even David and Mary didn’t smile that much. Well, maybe they did when they were alone together, but they were nice to Rum most of the time, so he didn’t spy on them like he did everyone else on the block.

Not that he’d been watching anybody else lately…at least not as much as he used to. Not since the new girl had moved into the house three houses from the corner. She had been crying when she and her dad had gotten out of their really big truck. Rum knew because he’d been watching very closely—it was exciting to have someone new to watch, someone new to use in his lots of deals. Maybe she would be the one who had the thing he needed, something that Regina would accept in return for what he wanted so badly from her.

He remembered very clearly that she’d been crying, or he thought he did, but she hadn’t cried since. When she came out every day to play in her front yard with a big golden dog, she was always laughing or smiling. She even smiled at Leroy when he was being grumpy after wrecking his bike into her fence and skinning his knee in front of Astrid. Most of her smiles, though, went to her dog and to Ruby, who came to her house because she loved dogs and the new girl’s dog was pretty and happy.

Ruby and the new girl became best friends really fast, which Rum didn’t like very much. Before Ruby had come over to meet the dog, he had always walked past the new girl’s yard at least once a day. The first time he did it was just to see her close up. She always wore a necklace, he’d noticed, one that shone in the sun. Regina liked shiny things, and even if she liked mirrors best of all, maybe a necklace would be enough.

Rum had only meant to look at the necklace as he walked past, but the new girl had seen him. And she had smiled at him.

Smiled.

At him.

Nobody smiled at him. David would help him, sometimes, when the bullies at school cornered him, and Mary would sometimes give him a cupcake when she had extra, but even they didn’t _smile_ at him. He was little and skinny and he made deals that traded something he had for the things he wanted—always trying to find the right thing to trade for something Regina would want—and he didn’t have friends. So nobody smiled at him.

But she did. She’d smiled and ran to the edge of her yard, her hands holding onto the chain link fence, and she’d talked to him.

“I’m Belle,” she said, still smiling. “What’s your name?”

“Rum,” he told her, and waited for her to laugh. Everybody did when they heard his name, even shy little Ashley who had sat by him once. Even the teachers would smile a little bit, although they tried to hide it.

But she only smiled and petted her dog’s big head when he licked her hand. “I saw you,” she said, “in your tree-house.” She pointed to the shadowed tree and the dark wooden fortress perched in its branches, sitting near the top of the hill all their houses marched up on.

He was surprised. “You saw me up there?”

“Yes.” She giggled when her dog jumped up with a stuffed frog in his mouth. “Down, Gold!” she said.

“I like that name,” Rum offered shyly, standing back a bit from the fence. Her dog shone, just like her necklace. Just like her smile.

“Do you want to pet him?” Belle asked.

He wanted to, but he’d been bitten by two dogs already, and he didn’t want it to happen again. So he shook his head and drew back a bit.

“It’s all right,” Belle said, and she smiled at him so nicely that he felt something warm and comfy, like a blanket, inside his chest. When she reached between the holes of the fence and took his hand, Rum slowly let her pull him forward until his fingers fell on soft golden fur. Gold sat nicely and looked at Rum with his mouth open, his tongue sticking out.

“ _He’s_ smiling at me, too,” Rum said, surprised.

“He likes you,” Belle told him. She put her hand on top of his, squeezing it between her fingers and Gold’s fur. “Gold always knows who the best kids are.”

And Rum had felt himself smiling back at her.

After that, he’d walked by her house every day when she was outside playing. He never told her that he only came to see her, but he thought that maybe she had figured it out. But then Ruby had come, and she was _always_ there, playing with Belle and Gold, and Rum didn’t want to go past when Belle was busy, just in case she didn’t smile at him. She had a friend now, so she didn’t need to talk to him.

But he missed her. And he didn’t like it. Missing people was stupid because once they left they never came back, but more than that, it made him feel sick and small and it made it hard to focus enough to watch everyone for something he could use. He didn’t even care, anymore, about Belle’s necklace and the deal he wanted to make with Regina, who ruled the block from her big fancy house at the very top of the hill, with all her new toys and Sidney’s secret-telling drawings.

Instead, Rum found himself thinking about Belle’s smile and her voice and her hand on his. He even missed Gold, and the fur that would move beneath his hand, and Belle putting her tiny, clean fingers on top of his.

So when Belle went somewhere with her dad in their truck and left Gold in the yard, Rum knew that this was his chance to get all the smiles back.

He crept out of his tree-house and walked, very casually, down the street. Then he lifted his hand—took a deep breath because it was hard to forget how much it hurt when a dog bit down on you with sharp teeth—and opened the gate.

Gold came right over to him, grinning at him with his tongue sticking out between long white teeth. Rum figured that it was hard _not_ to smile all the time when you got to live with Belle. If she made this deal with him, maybe _he_ would be able to smile, too, Rum thought hopefully.

Rum reached into his pocket and took out the leash he’d gotten from Archie in exchange for that cricket in the little cage August had made. It was kind of hard to get the leash attached to Gold’s collar, with him wriggling so much and Rum trying hard not to get too near the dangerous mouth full of even more dangerous teeth, but he finally got it on. Hearing the satisfying snick, Rum felt very pleased with himself, and taking a tight hold on the blue leash, he led Gold out of the yard.

He’d gotten a bowl of water ready, and he was glad he had because when he led Gold into the backyard of the abandoned house where nobody had lived for a long, long time, the dog went straight to the bowl and began lapping up water so fast that Rum’s pants got splashed.

“Stay here,” he ordered the dog, unclipping the leash—it was easier now since Gold was too busy drinking to wriggle very much.

Rum closed the gate behind him and went to hide the leash under the board in the corner of his tree-house. Then he sat down and waited for Belle to get home.

He almost felt guilty for his sneaky plan when he saw how scared she was to find the open gate and empty yard. He could hear her calling for Gold, and he held his breath until he was sure the dog wouldn’t start barking. Gold wasn’t much of a barker, Rum had noticed, and he was glad, even if he did have to throw him a bone he’d gotten from Ruby to keep him from digging under the gate.

Belle got the other kids on the block to help her look for Gold. Everyone liked her and her dog, so they were all happy to help. Her dad looked for a little bit and then went inside the house to get the phone. Rum watched the scattering of children anxiously, a little hole in his belly whenever any of them got too near the abandoned house. The backyard was hidden by tall, scratchy bushes no one wanted to get too close to, but one bark from Gold would give it all away and ruin everything. Jefferson got the closest, but Gold was drinking some more water and being quiet, so the boy wandered off in a different direction.

Rum had been planning on waiting until the other kids went home for supper to talk to Belle, but when he saw her start to cry, he decided that he’d waited long enough.

It was scary, leaving his tree-house and walking up to her in front of everyone, but Belle just looked at him. It was the first time ever that she hadn’t smiled at him, and he squirmed inside. For just a tiny little bit, he thought that maybe he should just forget his plan and tell her where to find Gold, but then the tall kid from the next block over, Gaston, gave Rum a mean little smile and stepped in front of Belle.

“What are you doing here, runt?” he asked really loudly.

Mary gave a little smile to Rum, but it wasn’t bright and real like Belle’s always were. “We’re busy looking for Belle’s dog, Rum,” she said, as if she thought that would make Rum turn around and leave.

Instead, he straightened his shoulders to make himself look bigger, and sidestepped until he could see Belle. “I know where Gold is,” he said, but not very loudly because he didn’t care if the others heard him. All that mattered was if Belle would listen and accept his bargain.

“You do?” Belle smiled, and she glowed, as if she were a firefly. She skipped past Gaston to grab hold of Rum’s hand. That made him forget about feeling bad, and he knew this was a smart deal, much better than that first one he’d made with Regina. But who cared if Regina wanted Belle’s necklace? Rum would find something else to give her in return for his little bear.

“Yes, I do,” he said solemnly. “I’ll take you to him, if…”

“If?” Belle asked. She was still holding onto his hand, which made Rum realize how small she was. He was little—everyone told him so—but she had to look up at him. It was strange, really, because it made him feel like he could keep her safe, the way he had kept his bear very, very safe before Regina had tricked him into making that deal.

“If you know where Gold is, you should just tell her,” Ruby said, sounding a little bossy.

Rum looked at her—just looked, but he knew everyone was afraid of him because they knew they might need to make a deal with him one day—and Ruby frowned and looked away.

“If I help you, you have to do something for me,” Rum instructed them all. It would have been better to talk to Belle when no one else was around, but since everyone was here, he had to make it sound like he didn’t care.

“Okay,” Belle said quickly, squeezing his hand. “What do I do? Is he okay?”

“He’s safe,” he told her, and he was surprised at how quiet his voice was. “But if I tell you, you have to agree to come live with me in my tree-house.”

“What?” Mary almost yelled. “She can’t do that!”

“People don’t live in tree-houses,” David said. He sounded like a grown-up.

“I can ask for whatever I want,” Rum said, standing even taller and glaring at all the children. All of them except Belle. She was still holding his hand and he didn’t want her to be scared of him and let go. “And I want Belle to come stay with me.”

“If I do, you’ll help me find Gold?” Belle asked. “He’ll get to come home?”

“He’ll have to,” Rum said, regretfully because he had tried to think of a way Gold could stay with them but he just couldn’t figure out how to get a big golden dog up a wooden ladder. “But I promise I’ll find him for you.”

“He’s probably the one who took him in the first place!” August said. He was standing a little off to the side, holding a stick in one hand that he used to draw lines he claimed were letters in the dirt.

Rum narrowed his eyes and opened his mouth, but before he could even say anything, Belle shook Rum’s hand and nodded. “Okay, I’ll go with you. Just please, help me find Gold—he’s lost and he’s probably scared and lonely.”

“But what will your dad say?” Mary asked, looking very sad.

“I can get the police to come rescue you!” David offered. Sometimes, Rum wondered if he thought he was a hero from a storybook. Other times, he wondered if he really _was_. He had sure acted like a hero when Mary had gotten a piece of apple stuck in her throat and almost choked.

“ _I_ can rescue you right now!” Ruby claimed fiercely.

Rum tensed, ready to run if he needed to, but Belle was shaking her head, her brown hair flapping against his arm in the wind. “No, I already decided. Besides, I want to find Gold.”

“Here.” Rum tugged gently on her hand and was happy and surprised when she followed him. The other kids started to follow, but luckily, it was dinner time for Mary and Ruby and August, and Gaston left after loudly declaring that this was a very bad idea. Jefferson and David, though, followed Rum and Belle to the yard where Rum opened the gate and showed them Gold. The dog danced around Belle and licked her hand, and Rum was relieved that he didn’t look scared at all. He didn’t want Belle to be worried about Gold while she was with him in the tree-house.

“Thank you!” Belle exclaimed happily when she finally stopped hugging Gold.

“I found him for you,” Rum reminded her, shooting a sideways glare at David and Jefferson in case they tried to accuse him of hiding the dog here. He knew no one had seen him bring Gold here, but that didn’t always matter.

“Yes, thank you!” Belle turned away from Gold and threw her arms around Rum.

Warmth and happiness and something strange and new rushed through Rum so that he felt like static electricity was shooting all over his body. He almost couldn’t even move. Belle’s touch felt better than anything he’d ever felt before. His mom certainly never hugged him, too busy talking about all the places she could have seen and wasn’t able to now that she had a kid tying her down. Only his bear had ever hugged him, but even that hadn’t felt anything like this.

“You’re welcome,” he said, and very carefully patted her on her back. He didn’t want to hurt her or break her, and she was so little. Rum remembered patting a compass he’d gotten once and it had broken—he didn’t even like to think of that happening to Belle.

Because she was smiling and happy, Rum let her walk Gold back to her yard. David finally had to go, which he did only after warning Rum to be nice to Belle. Jefferson stayed, though, and Belle ended up talking to him for a very long time, telling him how much food to give Gold and how he liked his belly rubbed and where his toys were.

“Don’t worry,” Jefferson finally said. “I’ll take really good care of him.”

“Come on,” Rum said, thinking that it was a good time now to go back to his tree-house. Belle had never been there before, and he had tried to make it look nice for her, just in case she accepted his deal.

“Okay.” Belle suddenly went very quiet, and she hugged Gold very tightly for so long that Rum began to get a little scared that she would change her mind and not go with him.

“Belle?” he said. His voice shook a little bit, which was embarrassing, but Jefferson was too busy playing with his hat to notice and Belle finally let go of Gold and turned to look at Rum. Her smile was very tiny and she almost looked like she was going to cry, but she took his hand again.

“I’m ready,” she said.

“Good.” He took a deep breath and tightened his grip on her hand, as if she were about to fall off something, and then he walked with her toward his tree-house.

Everything had worked out exactly like he wanted it to. He would never have to worry about not getting to see Belle smile anymore because now she’d be living with him. The couple times that his mom called him inside the house, he could hide Belle in the tree-house, and he would make sure to always bring her enough food. He had even stolen one of his mom’s fragile teacups to give Belle for when she got thirsty.

It was perfect, he thought smugly. He had Belle. He would get to see her smile everyday, and maybe she would even hold his hand some more.

This, he decided, was definitely the best deal he’d ever made in his whole entire life.

\---


	2. Best Friend

\---

Moving new places was always scary, but Belle had done it a ton of times already and she had learned that it was best to pretend it wasn’t scary at all. If she did that, then sometimes it ended up being fun and exciting, like one of the adventures the people in her books went on. Going to live in a tree-house certainly sounded like it would be a very big adventure, and Rum was always nice when he walked past her house and watched her play with her dog, so she tried to tell herself that it would all be fine. But she couldn’t help but be a little scared when she saw how big the ladder was and how high up the tree-house was. Her dad had never let her climb trees before, and the time she’d climbed the fence, Gold had been on the bottom to catch her if she fell.

“I’ll help you,” Rum said, and Belle felt a little bit better. Maybe he would catch her just like Gold would have.

“Okay,” she said. She was trying hard not to sound like she was scared or sad—a promise was a promise, after all; her mom had taught her that—but she knew she didn’t exactly sound brave or happy either.

He put his hand on her back when she climbed up onto the ladder, and she was a little impressed by how fast he climbed behind her. She felt a lot better knowing he was right next to her.

“Oh!” She stared when she got to the top of the tree-house. “It’s very nice,” she told Rum with a pleased smile. It was different than her home, with just the two of them in his nice house, but since he was there with her, she didn’t even care very much that the sunlight couldn’t really get into the windows past the branches outside.

“I’m glad you like it,” he said, and he looked shy again. Ruby had told Belle that Rum was scary and didn’t like anybody, but Belle kind of thought he was just timid and didn’t know how to talk to anyone.

Belle felt a little shy herself as he showed her around the place she was going to stay now. There was a sleeping bag in the corner with a big, fat pillow. In the other corner was a shelf with three boxes of cookies, a bag of chips, one carrot, a toothbrush, and a bottle of water. On the windowsill was a glass pop bottle with a pretty red flower in it.

“This is all for you,” Rum told her, pointing to the food. “There’s a flashlight by the sleeping bag for when it gets dark.”

“Are you going to stay with me?” she asked. Trying to be brave or not, there was no way she could stay here during the night all by herself, without even Gold there to protect her from nightmares.

“I usually stay here,” he said with a shrug. His hair was hanging in front of his eyes in a way that would have made Belle’s mom get out a comb. At the thought of her mom, though, Belle felt hot tears sting her eyes. She really wished Gold were with her; he always cheered her up whenever she felt sad about her mom being gone.

“Here!” Rum said so quickly that Belle jumped a little bit. “I got this for you.”

Curious, Belle followed him to a little box under the shelf. Rum opened it very carefully and slowly took a small white thing out. That was something Belle liked about him. Other boys were so fast and clumsy, but Rum was _always_ careful. Whenever he petted Gold, Belle’s fingers liked to move all by themselves to reach out and pat his cautious hand. It was hard not to, because he always made his fingers look like they were dancing.

“Ooh, it’s pretty,” she cooed when Rum turned and showed her a blue and white teacup in his hands. He held it out to her, looking kind of hopeful, and Belle tried to move like he did, slow and careful, cradling the cup in her own, smaller hands. There was a little bit of gold on the handle, which reminded her of Gold.

Her mom had drank out of a teacup like this, Belle remembered, and her hands started shaking. She gasped and felt her eyes go big and wide when the cup fell from her clumsy hands and landed on the floor. Rum looked down at it, completely silent.

“I’m so, so sorry!” she whimpered, falling to the floor so hard that her knees hurt. She was crying a little bit, and she didn’t want him to know—what if he was mad that she’d broken his pretty cup, or sad that she cried in front of him?—so she talked really fast and held up the cup to distract him. “It’s chipped, just a little bit, a tiny little piece.”

“It’s okay,” Rum said. He looked scared for a second, and then he reached out and put his hands on Belle’s arm to help her stand up. “It’s just a cup. It’s okay.”

“I’m sorry,” she said again, and then she burst into tears. She couldn’t help it. She had been so scared that Gold was gone forever like her mom, and then she’d been so happy that Rum had found him—even if he maybe had done it on purpose like August said—and now he was trying so hard to make her comfy and he was being so nice, and all of it was heavy and scary, like being lost in a huge store. So she started crying, and as hard as she tried to push her tears back with her hands, they kept coming.

She was surprised when Rum awkwardly petted her hair and gave her a little hug. “Don’t cry,” he begged in a little voice. “I don’t like it when you cry. I like it when you smile.”

Her dad hadn’t hugged her very much since her mom had gone away in the ambulance and never come back, and Ruby’s quick, tight hugs and Mary’s sweet, gentle hugs just weren’t enough. But Rum felt very warm, just like her mom had, and she liked the way he petted her hair, as if she were Gold. He looked so sad for her and he was trying so hard, and she had never seen or heard of him hugging anyone else. So she hugged him back and aside from a few sniffles, she stopped crying.

Rum held her a little longer, and then he pulled away to look at her very seriously. He had a little frown on his face and Belle suddenly wished that _he_ would smile. She had only seen him smile once, when they’d first met, but it had been a very nice smile. And maybe the other kids wouldn’t be so scared of him if he smiled more.

“You should be happy,” Rum told her. “Are you still worried about Gold? Here, I’ll show you something.”

She followed him closely as he moved to the middle of the tree-house; she didn’t want to be alone, and she liked being by him. She’d missed him since he’d stopped walking by her house every day.

Rum paused after he knelt on the floor. He scrunched up his forehead like he was thinking hard as he looked up at her. “I guess I can show you,” he said, so quiet that she almost couldn’t even hear him, “since you’re staying with me now.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” Belle promised, sitting down beside him. “I’m good at keeping secrets.”

His mouth twitched, just a little bit, like he wanted to smile but couldn’t quite remember how. Then he put his fingers under a board and lifted it up.

“You have a secret hole!” Belle exclaimed, clapping her hands excitedly. “Just like in a book!”

“This is the only thing I can’t trade in a deal,” he said solemnly. He lifted out a big pair of binoculars, so shiny and black that Belle knew they must have cost a lot of money, more even than she had in her piggy bank.

“Is this how you watch everyone?” she asked, touching the binoculars with only one shaky finger.

“Yes.” Rum bit his lip, then offered them to her. “You can see Gold with them. If you want to.”

“Really?” Belle smiled at him, and he brightened. “Can you help me?” she asked. “I don’t want to drop them.”

He looked alarmed when she said that, and he hugged the binoculars to himself. Belle couldn’t help but giggle. Luckily, he didn’t seem to mind. Instead, his mouth did that little twitch thing again.

“I’ll help you,” he said, and he was back to looking so shy that Belle wanted to hug him again, this time without crying.

Belle followed him to the window by the sleeping bag, and he held the binoculars for her. Belle liked feeling Rum so close to her, close enough to catch her just in case she tripped or fell. She liked how warm his hand was on her arm. And she liked the little sound he made when she leaned back against him after she got dizzy at seeing the far away get so close.

Gold was laying by the door of her house, waiting for Daddy to let him in to go to bed. He looked sleepy, but he didn’t look sad, so Belle tried not to care that she wouldn’t get to sleep in her bed with him tonight.

“These are really good bi-noc-u-lars,” she said admiringly when Rum’s hand got tired and he moved to put them away. “Weren’t they ‘spensive?”

“Yes, they were,” he answered. He liked to talk very quietly, she had noticed, but this was even quieter than usual, almost a whisper, like it was a secret. “I got them in my first deal, but I shouldn’t have taken them.”

“Why not?” she asked.

“Do you want a cookie?” he asked instead of answering her. He took extra time making sure the lid on his secret box was closed tight, and then he went to get her a cookie.

“Thank you,” Belle said politely. Her tummy was making noises since it was past dinnertime, and she took the cookie with a smile. When Rum didn’t take a cookie for himself, she broke hers in half and gave him a piece. “We can share,” she said.

But he didn’t eat it. He just held it in his hand and looked at it for a very long time, as if he had never seen a cookie before. But that was silly—he was the one who’d gotten three whole bags of them for her.

“Sit down,” she told him, taking his hand and tugging at him until he followed her over to the sleeping bag. Belle sat down and leaned back against the pillow. She was glad when Rum sat by her. He watched her very closely, and he only took a bite of his cookie after she took a bite.

“These are good,” he said, his eyes widening.

Belle cocked her head and looked at him curiously. He was very strange, and it was even more fun trying to figure him out than it was reading her books and guessing the endings. “Haven’t you ever tried a cookie before?” she asked him. “Didn’t you eat any before?”

“I didn’t get them for me,” he corrected her. “Besides, Mom says cookies are only for nice kids.”

“You’re a nice kid,” Belle said. She felt very sad, suddenly, and not because of her mom. She felt sad that Rum had never had a cookie before, and she wondered what _his_ mom was like. She was obviously very different from Belle’s mom, because Mama had always let Belle have cookies to take to preschool.

Rum looked at Belle like she was crazy. “I made you come here,” he reminded her. “The nice kids were the ones trying to save you.”

“Not Gaston,” Belle said, wrinkling her nose. “He’s not nice—he’s boring and really, really bossy. And you are too nice. You gave me a cookie and you didn’t get mad even though I broke your cup. And you helped Gold.”

Rum shrugged and looked down at the tiny piece of cookie he had left. He nibbled at a piece of it, his hair falling in front of his eyes again. It had been a long time since he’d had a haircut. Ashley said his long hair proved that he was a naughty kid, but Belle was starting to think that maybe his mom just didn’t take very good care of him. Maybe that’s why he’d wanted Belle to come live in his tree-house with him—maybe he wanted someone to take care of him. She felt a little better, thinking that, because that meant there was something she could do for him.

“Oh, and thank you,” she said, and she scooted closer to him. “I try to be brave like Daddy wants me to be, but I was very scared that Gold was lost. I’m glad you found him.”

Rum frowned again, which made her frown too because she’d been hoping he would smile. “I gave him water,” he mumbled. “He was very thirsty.”

“Do you have a pet?” she asked, a little surprised that he had known so much about taking care of a dog. It had taken her a long time to remember to give Gold water and learn how much food to give him.

“No. Mom says they’re hard work and they wouldn’t like me and would probably scratch me.”

“Oh.” Belle felt a little frustrated. She was _trying_ to take care of him and make him feel better, but it didn’t seem to be working very well. Not that it sounded like his mom was doing that good a job either, she thought. “Gold is nice,” she offered finally, not sure what else she could say.

“Yes, he is,” Rum agreed really fast. “I like him.”

“Can…can I see him tomorrow?” she asked. Tomorrow seemed like forever away, but she had promised to stay with Rum. She just wasn’t sure if she’d be able to sleep in this strange place in the dark without Gold.

“Yes.” Rum turned and looked at her, and Belle was delighted by the way the light from outside sparkled in his eyes. “We can go walking and see him, maybe.”

Belle clapped her hands and smiled excitedly. “Oh, can we? I’d like that! That way, he won’t miss me so much.”

Rum’s mouth did that twitch thing again, and she really, _really_ wanted him to smile. It would mean he was happy and that he liked having her here. It would mean she really was taking care of him like she’d promised she would.

“Tomorrow,” he promised her, and a promise from him was very serious and important, she knew, so she smiled at him and reached over to put her hand on his. He’d been wiping away the crumbs from the last of his cookie, but he stopped moving at all when she touched him.

“Thank you.”

His mouth moved again, more than the twitch, almost a smile. Belle felt something happy and floating, like a balloon, inside her chest where her dad said her heart beat. When Rum stood up, she put the hand that had been touching his over her chest just to make sure her heart hadn’t decided to float away without her.

“I have some crayons, if you want to draw,” Rum said.

She looked up at him, standing in the middle of his tree-house, looking shy again, and she smiled at him. Suddenly it seemed easier to be brave and adventurous. Gaston and Jefferson and James and all the other kids, they never seemed to need her, never acted like she was more important than any other kid, but with Rum, she felt like she was something special. Like she wasn’t just useless, left behind when her mom left and her dad forgot to look at anything but the old picture books filled with her mom smiling and laughing and happy. With Rum, Belle felt like maybe it was okay that she was still here when her mom wasn’t.

So she smiled at him and said, “I’m really tired. Can we draw tomorrow?”

“If you want to,” he said, and it was dark in the tree-house, but she thought he might be giving her that little smile again.

“I do,” she decided. “But right now, is it all right if I go to sleep?”

“Yes.” He came close to her and fussed around the sleeping bag while she pulled her shoes off and set them very carefully in a corner. When she laid down under the thick top of the sleeping bag, Rum covered her up and patted it down so she could still see him over the padding.

“Don’t go,” she said, a little tremble in her voice.

“I won’t,” he told her. He sat on the other end of the sleeping bag and tucked his feet under the covering. She thought that if he laid down, she might be able to touch his feet with her toes. A tiny giggle tried to get out of her mouth when she wondered if he was ticklish.

“Can you tell me a story?” she asked, because as brave as she felt, she was also a little nervous now that it was very dark outside and there was only the light of a streetlight outside coming through one of the windows.

Rum was quiet, but she knew he couldn’t have fallen asleep already. His breathing was much quieter than Gold’s ever was, and Belle missed the feel of her dog sleeping by her.

“Does your dad tell you stories?” Rum asked, and she wasn’t expecting him to talk right then so she jumped a little bit.

“No,” she admitted quietly. “But usually I read a book to Gold before I go to sleep.”

“You can tell _me_ a story,” Rum suggested. He sounded very sad and so serious that Belle wanted to hold his hand.

“I know all my stories already.” Belle took a deep breath and gathered up all her courage into one ball, then said, “But I’ve never heard the story of the first deal you made. All the kids say you make deals, but none of them know _why_ you make them.”

“Oh.” He didn’t even sound like Rum, then, not the Rum that the other kids were scared of. He sounded like someone different, and Belle thought that maybe he was like the princes in her books who were in disguise because a witch or a sorcerer had gotten upset with them.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Belle assured him quickly. She wished she could see him, but if she was watching him, maybe he wouldn’t tell her the story.

“All right,” he agreed. She felt him moving around, laying down and curling up under the blankets. His voice was muffled from beneath the covers, so Belle slid down so that she was under the blankets too. She reached out in the dark until she found his hand, then she curled her fingers over his. He squeezed back, and even though he wasn’t much bigger than her, his grip was very strong.

“Regina’s the one who got the binoculars,” Rum finally told her, whispering this secret into the warm folds between them. “They were her dad’s, but she got to use them all the time. She showed me how she could see anyone she wanted to through them. I knew that they would work really well in my tree-house, and if I knew what all the other kids were doing, I could make sure that none of them got close enough to hit me. But she wouldn’t give me them. She said I had to trade for them.”

“What did you trade?” Belle asked, keeping her voice hushed. She scooted farther down until she was laying beside him, just like she did with Gold.

“She wanted my little bear,” Rum said. It sounded like he was crying, but Belle pretended not to notice. “And I said yes because I didn’t know she meant _forever_. She let me keep the binoculars, but when I tried to give them back to get my bear back, she wouldn’t give him to me. So now I have to find something she wants.”

“What does she like?” Belle asked. Excitement and happiness bubbled up inside her because now she knew how she could take care of him. “Maybe I can help! Maybe I have something that she wants!”

“She likes glittery things,” Rum said. “Like mirrors and necklaces and stuff. But she might not ever give him back to me—she knows I want him, so she likes to keep him away from me.”

“That’s mean,” Belle said with a fierce frown. “Why did she want your bear?”

“Because he’s the best bear there is,” Rum said, and for the first time, he sounded a little irritated, like she should have known the answer to that already. “Everyone would want him. That’s why when I get him back, I’ll have to protect him from everyone.”

“Well, I have a mirror,” Belle said, and she was so happy about her new plan that she sat up and got tangled up in the sleeping bag. Rum helped her get out of the sleeping bag until they were both sitting on the top of it. When he turned on the flashlight, Belle turned to him and smiled up at him, grabbing his hands and squeezing them.

“I do have a mirror!” she said again. “It was my grandma’s, but I never use it. It’s big and silver and you can hold it in your hand, and it has a picture of a horse on the back. Do you think she would trade that for your bear?”

Rum frowned, which surprised Belle since she was only trying to help him, and he looked at her as if she had something messy on her face. “Why do you want to help me?” he asked suspiciously. “You shouldn’t even like me.”

Belle stared at him; she could feel her eyes get all big and surprised. “Why not? I do like you, Rum. We’re friends, aren’t we?”

He tugged his hands out of hers, still looking at her like she was something new and strange. “Nobody wants to be friends with me.”

“I do!” she insisted, sitting up straighter so he could see how serious she was. “I like being your friend. And I do want to help you get your bear back, just like you helped me get Gold back. I can show you the mirror tomorrow, so you can see if you think Regina will want it.”

“And…” Rum licked his lips, his shoulders slumping a little bit. “And what do you want me to give you for the mirror? You want to go home?”

“I don’t want anything for it.” Belle smiled at Rum, even though she felt very sad and tired inside. She wondered if no one had ever given him a present before, or tried to help him. And even though she tried to be nice to everyone, she thought she might not like meeting his mom after all. “I want you to have it, for free, so you can give it to Regina.”

“You…” His eyes went wider than hers had been and his mouth dropped open. It would have been funny except that he looked so happy and disbelieving that she only smiled at him. And it was strange, because her smile was tiny and new, just like his had been, as if he had traded their smiles. “You would just give it to me?”

“Yes.” And Belle had read enough books and remembered enough of her mom and dad before the end that she didn’t even wait before leaning forward and hugging Rum. She stretched up her neck and kissed him on the cheek, smiling when she realized that he smelled just like cookies and Gold.

For a long time after she dropped her arms and moved back, Rum only watched her. Then he took a deep breath and stood. He held out his hand for her and helped her get up, too, and then he started pulling her toward the ladder.

“What are we doing?” Belle asked, stopping where she was. “Where are we going? Do you want the mirror _now_?”

“No.” Rum turned around to look at her. The lights from outside were shining in his eyes again, like little stars caught in tiny pieces of sky. Belle wondered if she could wish on them like she could the real stars in the big sky. “I’m going to take you home. You don’t have to stay here anymore.”

“What?” Belle felt something hard and cold in her tummy, and her heart wasn’t light and floating anymore. “You don’t want me here?”

Rum sighed and pulled her toward the ladder again. “No, I’m letting you go. Gold will want you to be home, and won’t your dad be happy if you can live with him? Besides, I know it’s scary to be in a new place, and I don’t want you to be scared. So you can go home.”

“But I promised,” Belle whispered. “I said I would stay here with you. You’ll be all by yourself.”

Rum shrugged, but he didn’t look up from the ladder and his hand was very tight around her fingers. “It’s okay. I don’t care. You’d better go before your dad starts looking for you.”

“But…” Belle frowned. She wanted to go home and see her dad and Gold and sleep in her own bed and read her own books, but she didn’t want to leave Rum. His tree-house was nice and it had a lot of pretty things, but it was dark and lonely too, and it made Rum look very tiny even though he was taller than her. “But what about the mirror?”

“If you still want to give it to me,” Rum said, his forehead wrinkling like he didn’t think she would give him anything, “then I’ll come get it tomorrow. But not when Ruby’s there. No one else can know about this. It’s a secret.”

“I won’t tell,” Belle promised him. She took a step to the ladder, then stopped. She’d really wanted Rum to smile, but he hadn’t, not really, not a big smile like that first day she’d met him. And now she was leaving him and he’d be all by himself without even his mom here or a dog like Gold.

“Goodbye, Belle,” Rum said before she could tell him that she wasn’t sure she wanted to go. He let go of her hand and stuck his hands in his pockets, which Belle didn’t like because then she couldn’t see his fingers dancing.

“You won’t forget me, will you?” she asked him.

She was so surprised when he laughed that she couldn’t help staring. It was very fast, so she couldn’t really see him smile, but the laugh was fun to listen to anyway.

“Forget you?” He shook his head and even rolled his eyes at her. “Don’t worry. I never forget anything.”

“Oh.” She wasn’t quite sure what to say to that, so she just watched him.

“I’ll look through the binoculars,” Rum told her, so serious that he looked like he’d never laughed. “Just to make sure you find your way home.”

“Okay.” She wanted to say something else, something to make him smile, something to make him not look so sad, something to convince him that he was a nice kid because it wasn’t fair that there were three whole bags of cookies and he wouldn’t eat them. But that was too many words, and she was never very good at thinking of things to say unless they were in her storybooks. So instead of talking, she just stepped forward and hugged him. He went stiff and straight, like a board, but then he put his hand on her back and patted her very gently.

“Goodbye, Rum,” she whispered, and then she turned around and started to climb down the ladder, all really fast because she didn’t want him to know that she was crying.

As soon as she got down the ladder—not even caring that it had been a long climb—she started running toward her house. It seemed strange that she felt sad now, something twisting in her chest and making it really hard to breathe, just like when Mama had gone away in the ambulance. She didn’t know Rum that well, but she felt like she did, and she did know him better than any of the other kids, and she didn’t like leaving him. It felt just like her mom leaving her, and that had made her so sad and unhappy, so she hated doing the same thing to Rum.

But tomorrow, she promised herself, she would give him the mirror. She would help him get his bear back. Then he wouldn’t be so alone and she would have taken care of him like he’d wanted her to. And maybe, she thought as she let herself into the gate and was tackled by a wriggling Gold, maybe she would get to spend time with him again. Maybe they could be more than friends—maybe they could be _best_ friends!

When Belle went inside her house to find her grandma’s mirror, she wasn’t sad anymore. Instead, she was happy, and that…that was even better than being brave.

\---


	3. Best Day

\---

It was night for a very, _very_ long time, longer than it had ever been night before. Rum tried to sleep, but the sleeping bag seemed different, softer, and it smelled different, too, almost like some kind of flower—he thought maybe that was what Belle smelled like—and anyway, she was gone and he was alone so he couldn’t sleep very well. Instead, he watched the sky and waited for the stars to change into the sun. He waited. And waited. And waited. He thought he had probably gotten whole _years_ older while waiting.

But when day finally came, it wasn’t any better than night. It was lighter, but the light seemed cold and grayish, not like the light when Belle had come home with him, and there wasn’t anything else to make it better. Just him alone in his tree-house, without even his bear to keep him company. It wasn’t as cold either, but Rum didn’t care about that because it was always warmer in the mornings and if Belle had stayed, maybe it would have felt _good_ -warm, like hot chocolate and fireplaces and melted marshmallows. But she hadn’t and it didn’t and even after waiting such a _long_ time, he almost didn’t want to get up and move around. He curled up in a ball inside the sleeping bag and closed his eyes and tried to pretend that he was hugging his bear and Belle was sleeping on the other end of the sleeping bag.

But it didn’t work. It never worked. He was always alone, still, when he opened his eyes again.

Sighing a little bit, Rum finally got up and tried to brush out the wrinkles from his clothes. It was bad enough that everyone would know he had let Belle go—he didn’t want them to think he was sad about it too, and looking bad always made people think you were either very sad or mad. He could have gone inside the house and changed, but then maybe his mom would see him and decide to make him do all the chores she hadn’t gotten done while she was drinking that smelly drink, so it was better to stay out of sight.

When he finished, he looked around at his tree-house, surprised at how different it seemed. Belle hadn’t been there very long at all, but she had made it look different just by standing there in the middle and smiling and laughing and clapping her hands, or even looking sad. Something pinched his chest a little bit when he remembered her crying over the teacup he had gotten her, and he stepped forward and picked up the cup almost without even thinking about it.

It was a little big for his hands, but he could hold it cupped between his palms. He supposed the leaves on it were nice looking, but all he could see was the little chip on the side. Belle had been very worried about it, and normally Rum thought he would have been too—his mom hadn’t given him permission to take it out of the house, after all—but he hadn’t wanted Belle to worry and now that he looked at it in the day, the chip really wasn’t very big at all. In fact, he liked it _better_ with the chip. It made it more interesting.

Or maybe it just reminded him of Belle, he thought sadly. Even if his mom asked him where the cup was, he decided that he wouldn’t tell her. He’d hide it and keep it, just because he needed something to prove that Belle had almost lived with him. He still wasn’t quite sure why he had let her go, and he knew she wouldn’t ever want to see him again even if she had been nice enough to pretend that she would. It made him sad, sadder even than when his mom had first told him that his dad had left because he’d found out that Rum was about to be born—and that was _very_ sad.

Checking again to make sure that his clothes weren’t wrinkled, he took a deep breath, straightened his shoulders so he looked a little taller, and climbed down the ladder. It wasn’t like he had anywhere to go, but he’d have to face the other kids eventually, and anyway, he didn’t want to stay in his tree-house anymore, not when he couldn’t seem to think of anything but Belle.

He wanted to be mad at her. It would be easy to decide that she was as mean as the rest of the kids and just forget about her. But she wasn’t mean, and she had offered to help him get his bear back, and she had hugged him. She had _kissed_ him, and that was kind of hard to forget about. So he wasn’t mad at her, and he didn’t hate her. He just wished that she could have liked him enough to stay with him, at least until the end of summer.

“Hi, Rum!”

He jumped straight up in the air, like a frog, and could feel his heart beating like a little drum in his chest. Scowling fiercely, he whirled from the ladder to face whoever had scared him half to death, his hands held up in front of him in case it was Gaston or somebody who wanted to hurt him. “ _Don’t_ sneak up on m—”

But he couldn’t even finish saying it. Because Belle was standing behind him. And she was holding something behind her back. And she was smiling at him.

He wanted to say something, but his mouth had stopped working and all he could do was stare at her.

After a second or two, Belle’s smile disappeared. If Rum hadn’t known better, he would have thought she looked nervous. She edged forward a little bit and brought her hands out from behind her back to show him a silver mirror with a horse engraved along its surface. It reflected the sunlight so brightly that Rum had to squint as he looked at Belle.

She hadn’t lied. She had promised to come back—and she had. She had promised to bring him the mirror—and she had. She had told him the truth. It was so surprising that Rum _still_ couldn’t talk.

“Rum?” she asked uncertainly. “Are you all right? Is it okay that I came here?”

When she started to step backward, Rum’s mouth started working again. “Yes!” he almost shouted. He darted forward and grabbed hold of her hand so that she wouldn’t leave. “I’m just…I didn’t know you would come back,” he confided very quietly.

Belle cocked her head and looked up at him curiously. “I said I was going to.”

“I know, but…” Rum shrugged and looked down at his feet, though he was careful not to let go of her hand. “Nobody ever comes back.”

“Well, I do,” Belle said confidently, and she stood up straighter. “I promised to come live with you, and even if I don’t sleep here, I’ll still come over.” Rum knew he was staring at her again, so maybe that was why she suddenly shrank a little bit and bit her lip. “I mean, if you want me to.”

Just like the first time he had met her, Rum felt his mouth stretching into a wide smile. And he had been right—it was very easy to smile when Belle was around.

“I do want you to,” he told her, and he knew he wasn’t very brave, but Belle made it impossible to feel scared, so he added, “I like spending time with you.”

He wasn’t sure why, but _she_ had started staring at _him_ as soon as he smiled. Her eyes were wide and blue like the sky and she held onto his hand as tightly as he was holding onto hers and when she smiled back at him, Rum was pretty sure that this was the happiest day of his life. The only way it could be better was if his bear were there too, and that didn’t seem so impossible anymore, not with the big, shiny mirror in Belle’s other hand.

“I like spending time with you, too,” Belle said shyly. “We could be best friends, don’t you think?”

“I think we already are,” Rum said boldly, and smiled again when she laughed—not a mean laugh like Regina or his mom, but a nice laugh that was happy and made _him_ feel even happier than he already was.

Belle stepped closer to him, just like Mary would step close to James sometimes or Sean would stand by Ashley, and Rum realized that he liked it when she stood so close. “Here’s the mirror—do you think Regina will like it?”

“She loves horses,” he answered. Excitement was all tangled up inside him like the knots in the yarn his mom sometimes messed with, and he wasn’t sure which he was more excited about—Belle coming back or being so close to rescuing his bear. “But,” he added with a touch of disappointment, “Regina likes to sleep in. She won’t be awake yet.”

“Well,” Belle said brightly, “the mirror will still be here when she does wake up. Can I come with you when you go to make the new trade?”

“If you want,” he said with forced casualness. It would have been hard for her _not_ to go, he thought, since he didn’t think he was going to let go of her hand any time soon.

“I do.” Belle smiled at him again, and Rum realized that he was smiling too. He didn’t remember smiling before, not like this, so easy and natural. “Oh, Dad got me a new kind of cereal for breakfast! Do you want some? It has marshmallows in it. You can see Gold while we eat—he likes you.”

“I’d like that,” he said, and he smiled at her again—which made her stare at him for a long second with bright, shining eyes—and then she led him toward her house, already talking about one of her storybooks. And this was better, _way_ better, than one of his deals. Because Belle didn’t _have_ to be with him—she _wanted_ to be with him.

With her hand in his, Rum felt warm and light and new, all the things the daylight had been supposed to make him feel but hadn’t. Maybe Belle was just like the sunshine, he thought, which just made it perfect that she was planning to spend her days with him. Maybe he would still be alone in the nights, but soon he’d have his bear with him, and anyway, no matter how long it was night, eventually it would always be morning again.

The End


End file.
